Make Your Slides Simple and Memorable

Slides have become the weapons of mass destruction in organisations. We need to make slides for every scenario: To explain your success or failure to others, and for customers, managers and team members.It is through persuasive presentations that we get to ask for funding of our ideas. The trick lies in making great slides that will tell the story. Here are some rules about making slides that I have learnt from the Zen masters.

1. SLIDES ARE FOR AUDIENCE, NOT SPEAKERThat means, slides are not meant to be used as a teleprompter. Do not read off the slides - especially if they are heavy on text.The audience will always read them ahead and not focus on what you have to say for the first point on the slide. If you need to have speaker notes, make sure they are bullet points and not complete sentences or a paragraph of text. The slides should have two or three arguments the audience will need to remember when they are deciding to vote in your favour.If you need to refer to a document or a spreadsheet, print it out for the audience to refer to. Do not put that document or spreadsheet on to a slide. The slides are memory aides for the audience — not for the speaker.2. LESS INFORMATION MAKES IT EASIER TO RECALLI once saw the head of one of the largest banks hold the audience spellbound with just three slides. She spoke for an hour about the evolution of private banking in India. Each slide had the name of a common bird — pigeon, crow and eagle, which she used as metaphors. She got a standing ovation at the end of her presentation.Some speakers believe that every square inch of space on the slide can be used to add some more text or some graphs and data tables. When it comes to slides, less text makes a slide more memorable. Avoid having more than four to five words on a slide. Be miserly with the words you use on a slide. Telegraphic language is better than writing full paragraphs.3. SAY IT VISUALLY THROUGH GRAPHICSUse graphics to create a visual summary of the idea on the slide. I ask friends who are photography enthusiasts for permission to use their photos on my slides. Most friends are happy to help. Avoid using the standard clip art. They lead the audience to believe that your content is equally prosaic.Use graphics to help the audience remember the conclusion from data tables or pie charts. If you want people to remember that they can save 15% of their marketing budget by using your services, just write the number 15% on the slide as you explain to the audience how that would happen.4. TRY IT OUTAfter you have made the slides, have someone sit through your presentation and listen to you practise your presentation.At the end, ask the person to describe the slides they remember. Those are the only slides you should retain. The human mind cannot remember more than seven pieces of information, says an oft-quoted piece of research.Each one of us sits through so many presentations that our senses have become dulled. In a world where there is so much of information, attention spans have reduced. So if you keep your message simple, it is more likely to be remembered.Remember: Slides are meant to be mnemonics for the audience to recall what you have spoken about. They are not speaker notes.Think about it.--------------The original version of this article appeared in the print edition of  Economic Times dated 28th December 2012Visual courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/